The photomechanical film-making process comprises a process of converting a half-tone image to a dot image. In this process the technique according to an infectious development has been used for reproduction of a high contrast image. An image of high contrast and high resolution can be obtained by processing a lith type silver halide photographic light-sensitive material with an alkaline hydroquinone developer having a low concentration of a sulfite ion, so-called, a lith type infectious developer.
However, such a lith type infectious developer has problems that it is likely to subject to an air oxidation and its extremely poor preservability makes it difficult to keep constant a quality of continuously processed photographic light-sensitive materials.
As a method of obtaining a high contrast image rapidly without using such a developer, there is proposed a method of developing a silver halide photographic light-sensitive material comprising a tetrazolium compound or a hydrazine derivative, so-called, a contrast increasing agent, with an alkaline developer. According to this method, the preservability of the developer is excellent, rapid processing is possible, and an ultra high contrast image can be easily obtained.
However, in the method of processing a silver halide photographic light-sensitive material comprising a contrast increasing agent, the preservability of the developer is improved, but the developer has problems that sensitivity variation is increased and image sharpness is deteriorated on processing the material with less replenishment. The resolution of the problems has been required.
The demand for less replenishing of developer has been recently increased in view of resources saving and environmental protection. Under such a background, a method capable of stably processing a silver halide photographic light-sensitive material even with less replenishment of developer.